A senior Pakistani official said it had been struck under Musharraf and renewed by the army during the “transition to democracy” –a six-month period from February 2008 when Musharraf was still president but a civilian government had been elected.

Referring to the assault on Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound, the official added: “As far as our American friends are concerned, they have just implemented the agreement.” The former US official said the Pakistani protests of the past week were the “public face” of the deal. “We knew they would deny this stuff.”

So it looks like we had a deal in place since Bush botched Tora Bora to go into Pakistan and make up for it. And the details seems well worked out, all the way up to the public displays of outrage by Pakistani officials.